Family recalls devoted pilot killed in gyrocopter crash

Tara Miko
Reporter
Tara started with APN in 2010 after graduating with a journalism and politics degree from Griffith University in Brisbane. After two-and-a-half years working on APN papers in the Bowen Basin in Central Queensland, she joined the team at The Chronicle in February 2013. In September that year she took over the reins of the Rural Weekly.

"Ted was a highly experienced pilot with many years' experience who flew weekly and people were used to hearing him flying around the Lockyer Valley," she said.

"He was well respected for his exceptional flying skills. He made it look so easy.

"He was an engineer and a little eccentric.

"He was a shy bloke who seemed to hold himself back or not recognise the talent he had, which sometimes upset those who did not have such extraordinary talent and believed they did."

A man with the ability to make anything he needed, Mr Hurley was renowned for his engineering skills but his true passion was in flying and gyrocopters.

Mr Hurley's passion for gyrocopters and flying started in Mt Isa, where he built his first craft, but after a crash into trees when he was still learning the ropes, he told his family he would take lessons.

He won the award for the best new design for his gyrocopter in 2004 and shortly after, he moved to his property in Lefthand Branch, where he farmed olives and some fruit trees, with plans to run sheep.

Ms Hurley said her brother had been in the process of making a new gyrocopter when he died.

Mr Hurley is survived and sadly missed by his father Edwin "Sonny" Hurley and mother Phyllis, sisters Jenelle Hurley and Shirley Antony, son Leon Hurley and grandson Joseph Hurley, and friends Nick Wilkins, Jim and June Macdonald and Keith McKlean.